Sunday, 8 December 2013

Happy Bloody Birthday, Behind the Couch

I can haz black and white cake now?

Behind the Couch turns five years old today.

Thank you very much to everyone who has swung by this year. While it has been a fairly uneventful year, there have been a few highlights, including October’s Lovecraftathon, in which I looked at some adaptations of HP Lovecraft’s cosmic horror tales. Indeed, throughout this month I’ll be looking at adaptations of the work of MR James to get into the appropriate mood for Christmas. There has also been the usual swooning over Vincent Price, loitering in graveyards, reviews of old favourites, new favourites, obscure gems, obscure trash – everything from the sublime to the not very good.

Throughout the year I’ve also been reading and reviewing novels and short stories, listening to copious amounts of Kate Bush, discovering new things while watching Suspiria – with a live soundtrack, no less – and meeting fellow horror bloggers in the flesh. Rather excitingly, I was also invited to contribute to a new Eli Roth project, The Crypt, which shall be unveiled very soon and is set to bring a whole world of horror goodness direct to your iPhone. Stay tuned for more on that over the coming weeks.

I also chatted with author/editor Johnny Mains about his new book on the 1967 cult film The Sorcerers and his mission to see that John Burke’s work onit as screenwriter is rightly acknowledged.

Away from blogging I have continued to contribute to publications such as Paracinema, Exquisite Terror and for the first time this year, Diabolique – in fact my feature on the cinematic adaptations of Richard’s Matheson’s I Am Legend is the current issue’s cover feature. If you’re not familiar with these publications, they’re worth checking out. While Paracinema magazine is currently on hiatus, the website is still updated regularly with all kinds of genre related articles and reviews, including my own monthly feature, Audiodrome: Music in Film.

4 comments:

James, congratulations on 5 years worth of blogging - no mean feat and what's more you've left behind a fantastic archive in your wake - a treasure throve of interesting, idiosyncratic Horror and field photography.

Behind the Couch is a term used as a humorous metaphor to describe the actions that a state of fear may drive someone to: for example, a young child hiding 'behind the couch' when watching a scary film or TV show. Its use generally evokes a feeling of nostalgia: safe fear in a domestic setting.

In the case of this blog, it also denotes the reviewer hiding behind the couch in shame, due to the huge amount of trashy horror films he watches...

'The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.'

H.P. Lovecraft

'Like one, that on a lonesome roadDoth walk in fear and dread,And having once turned round, walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.'

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

'A shudder through the silence creptAnd death athwart the noonlight swept…Graves closed round my path of life,The beautiful had fled;Pale shadows wandered by my side,And whispered of the dead.'

Sarah Helen Whitman

'We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.'

Stephen King

'Human beings are the only living creatures endowed with a full awareness of their own mortality.'

Alex Lickerman, Buddhist Physician

'A house is never still in darkness to those who listen intently; there is a whispering in distant chambers, an unearthly hand presses the snib of the window, the latch rises. Ghosts were created when the first man awoke in the night.'